Friday, June 02, 2006

Disco. Inst.: "Waaahhhhh!"

The current issue of the journal Science gave us further proof that the AAAS has no interest in being a neutral or fair participant in the debate over ID and evolution.

Of course not. Science magazine is the premier journal for (you guessed it) science. It is constitutionally opposed to non-science being presented as science. As such, Science magazine rightly has no interest in unfairly treating non-science and science interchangeably.

Luskin also mewls:

By labeling Discovery Institute "creationism’s main think tank," Holden engages in blatant editorializing and abandons her role as reporter for that of mouthpiece for ID's critics.

"ID is not creationism," Casey huffs, because "creationism always postulates a supernatural creator, and/or is focused on proving some religious scripture. But intelligent design does neither." Except that it actually does the former, so it is creationism.

He proceeds to quote Michael Ruse without understanding the point Ruse is making:

[ID] is opposed, often bitterly, by the scientific establishment. Journals such as Science and Nature would as soon publish an article using or favourable to Intelligent Design as they would an article favourable to phrenology or mesmerism – or, to use an analogy to the claims of the Mormons about Joseph Smith and the tablets of gold, or favourable to the scientific creationists’ claims about the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs.

Good! I should hope the scientific establishment would treat pseudo-science with disdain. Science ought to show ID the same disdain they would show to discredited and pseudo-scientific babbling about mesmerism and phrenology. Next he'll be telling us Science should treat astrology as science.

Luskin's tantrum winds down with the laughable claim that it is science, not the Disco. gang, who have "a sarcastic, mocking, anti-scientific attitude when it talks about ID." One can only think that Luskin himself is speaking sarcastically when he asks people not to argue about labels but "to address the physical evidence or arguments put forward by design scientists." Had the IDolators actually put forward evidence, someone would undoubtedly be glad to address it. Whining about the ref being mean to you just isn't going to cut it though.

Let's not forget, by the way, that the article at issue is not a research report, it's a news account of the legal decision regarding a Disco. inspired warning sticker placed on textbooks in Cobb Co., GA. How does warning students that evolution is "a theory, not a fact" constitute anything but "a sarcastic, mocking, anti-scientific attitude"?

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." Matt 23:23.